Home Exhibitions CIFO 2006 Commissions Program Exhibition Alexander Apóstol: Savage Modern/ Moderno Salvaje

2006 Commissions Program Exhibition Alexander Apóstol: Savage Modern/ Moderno Salvaje

March 17 to May 6, 2007

Curator: Cecilia Fajardo-Hill

CIFO exhibits contemporary artists from Venezuela Alexander Apóstol and Magdalena Fernández.

(Miami, April 2006) The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation will exhibit Alexander Apóstol: Savage Modern/ Moderno Salvaje and Magdalena Fernández: Surfaces/Superficies, May 13-June 18, 2006 at the foundation’s new art space located at 1018 North Miami Avenue.

The first two exhibitions for CIFO’s new Commissions Program, Savage Modern and Surfaces highlight the artwork of these two multifaceted artists, both of Venezuelan descent, and feature recent installation, photography and video, including newly-created pieces never before exhibited in the US. In what are both artists’ first solo shows in Miami, the two exhibitions are juxtaposed in the art space to create a dialogue between their two diametrically opposed developments of their common narrative: modernity and modernism.

Alexander Apóstol’s work, comprised of photography series and video pieces, questions the development of modernity in his native Venezuela—which extrapolates into a general questioning of a universal idea of “modernity,” creating a dialectic between the “modern” and a reality that contradicts this idea. He accomplishes this by revealing a paradoxical reality where he finds contradicting forces at play by digitally manipulating photographs in both his Residente Pulido and Residente Pulido:Ranchos series and by creating “real” video situations, such as the pieces Don Carlos and Documental, where the question of Venezuela’s dreams of modernity ever having been accomplished is poignantly asked. The majority of the series of photographs and all of the video pieces will be seen for the first time in the US in this exhibition.

Magdalena Fernández’s art stems from the Venezuelan mid-century modern movements of Geometric Abstraction and Kinetic Art. She has developed a unique, sensitive, abstract body of work. Surfaces/Superficies highlights recent and newly created video pieces, sensorial compositions of geometric shapes altered, molded, by elements such as water, sound, and light. Producing installation pieces specifically for this exhibition, Fernández creates experiences that involve the viewer by exploring the possibilities of movement and form creating atmospheres through light and geometric shapes. Using materials such as fiber-optic and neon cables, her installations, such as 1em006 and 2em006, test the viewer’s perception of rigid surfaces such as the square (or plane) as they become fluid light, to be interacted with.

“Part of CIFO’s mission in promoting artists from Latin America is to exhibit the work of artists like Fernández and Apóstol who are at a pivotal stage in their careers where they benefit from more exposure in the US, particularly Miami,” comments Director and Chief Curator, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill.